A randomly comprehensive survey of extraordinary movie experiences from the art house to the grindhouse, featuring the good, the bad, the ugly, but not the boring or the banal.

Monday, July 27, 2009

ABC News Discovers "The Room"

During the teaser before the commercial break on tonight's ABC Evening News, the anchor said something to the effect of: some people are calling it the worst movie ever made, but moviegoers can't get enough of it. I thought they were going to come back and talk about G-Force. To my surprise, the final segment described the emergence of an authentic cult movie phenomenon in our jaded times.

I first learned about The Room from Tenebrous Kate, Empress of the equally Tenebrous Empire after which her admirably spooky movie blog is named. Here is her account of the movie, including a shout-out to yours truly for allegedly coining a category for films like this one. Since ABC will only allow me to link to their site, I had better illustrate what everyone's talking about with this official trailer, uploaded by OperationDumptheDuge:

It may surprise some people that a film acclaimed as the Worst Ever isn't a "genre" film. It is neither an action film nor a horror film, from what I can tell. It looks more like a Lifetime Original Movie, or people's worst case scenario for that genre. Nevertheless, on this small evidence you can see what others have noted: bad acting all around, and profoundly questionable production decisions. The focus of attention is actor-auteur Tommy Wiseau, shown here in what may be a typical scene from his performance, uploaded by DVDont.

But The Room's unusual quality doesn't depend entirely on Wiseau's presence on-screen. Here's a bit of romance between two supporting actors, uploaded by needforswede.

Here's more on the history of the movie, on which Wiseau reportedly spent $6,000,000 in production and promotion. Released in theaters in 2003, the cult really seems to have picked up steam only in the past year, and now has caught the attention of one of the three major TV networks. So here's ABC's account of the cult, including footage of audience participation at a recent showing, entitled "Enjoying a Really Bad Movie." (Shared via AddThis ) Those who've seen the film can judge whether 's been done justice, and the rest of you can ponder whether this is a cult worth joining.